From investigative reports, poetry collections, self-help guides to philosophical treatises, the Covid-19 pandemic has given birth to hundreds of books in an otherwise depressed publishing market.
The Covid-19 world has seen release of a stack of pandemic-related books and unending announcements about future publications.
From medical professionals, journalists, novelists, poets to celebrities and children have used the lockdown period to write books, which range from investigative reports, poetry collections, self-help guides to philosophical treatises. Media houses are also offering free e-books.
Digital and self-publishing are facilitating quick and cheaper go-to-market routes. In a reversal of the usual approach, some of these books would be printed after the release of digital editions.
Older pandemic related famous works have also become more relevant. A recent publication has been updated with a Covid-19 chapter.
It would not be surprising if the mother book tracing the writing and publication of the coronavirus related literature, too, is announced soon. And it could run into multiple editions as more books would be churned out because the pandemic threatens to be a part of our life like other viral infections. It is only a matter of time before some of these books lead to production of movies and plays.
10 books on Covid-19
- Quarantine! How I Survived the Diamond Princess Coronavirus Crisis
Gay Courter
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Post Hill Press (November 10, 2020)
What happens when you find yourself at the epicenter of a global crisis over a contagious new virus? Bestselling writer Gay Courter and her filmmaker husband learned the answer to that question in early February 2020, just as they were about to disembark from the Diamond Princess in Tokyo after a dazzling two-week southeast Asian cruise.
2. How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic
Bill Hayes
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing; Illustrated Edition (August 25, 2020)
Author and photographer Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared humanity–capturing in real time this strange new world we’re now in with his signature insight and grace. Featuring his inimitable street photographs, the book chronicles an unimaginable moment in time, offering a long-lasting reminder that what will get us through this unprecedented, deadly crisis is each other.
3. Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights Series)
by Harvard Business Review (Author)
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (10 August 2020)
Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery provides you with essential thinking about managing your company through the pandemic, keeping your employees (and yourself) healthy and productive, and spurring your business to continue innovating and reinventing itself ahead of the recovery. The series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future.
4. The Coronavirus: What you Need to Know about the Global Pandemic
Dr Swapneil Parikh, Maherra Desai, Dr Rajesh Parikh
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Penguin eBury Press (15 July 2020)
The symptoms of the Coronavirus are dangerously similar to that of the common flu: fever, coughing, breathlessness, tiredness, headache and muscle pain. We need credible information from professionals to understand what the Coronavirus is, and how we can prepare and protect ourselves against it. The book addresses the history, evolution, facts and myths around the pandemic.
5. COVID-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One
Debora MacKenzie
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Hachette Books (July 14, 2020)
Science journalist Debora MacKenzie lays out the full story of how and why it happened: the previous viruses that should have prepared us, the shocking public health failures that paved the way, the failure to contain the outbreak, and most importantly, what we must do to prevent future pandemics.
6. The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again
Richard Horton
Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: Polity; (June 22, 2020)
In this short and hard-hitting book, Richard Horton, editor of the medical journal The Lancet, scrutinizes the actions that governments around the world took – and failed to take – as the virus spread from its origins in Wuhan to the global pandemic that it is today.
7. Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic
Alice Quinn (Ed.)
Print Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Knopf (June 9, 2020)
In this urgent outpouring of American voices curated by Alice Quinn, the onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.
8. Pan(dem)ic! COVID-19 Shakes the World
Slavoj Zizek
Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: Polity; (May 26, 2020)
As an unprecedented global pandemic sweeps the planet, who better than the supercharged Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek to uncover its deeper meanings, marvel at its mind-boggling paradoxes and speculate on the profundity of its consequences? He provides a concise and provocative snapshot of the crisis as it widens, engulfing us all.
9. Economics in the Age of COVID-19
Joshua Gans
Print Length: 131 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press (May 19, 2020)
Economist Joshua Gans steps back from the short-term chaos to take a clear and systematic look at how economic choices are being made in response to COVID-19. He shows that containing the virus and pausing the economy—without letting businesses fail and people lose their jobs—are the necessary first step.
10. Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City
Fang Fang, Michael Berry
Print Length: 328 pages
Publisher: HarperVia (May 15, 2020)
Acclaimed Chinese writer Fang Fang postings have given voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of her fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbors and friends taken by the deadly virus.